Ro water, to remineralize or not

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Yanbbrox

Yanbbrox

Monster hole digger
MFK Member
Oct 17, 2007
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Nr Mcr uk
This has sort of started drifting to an off topic in other threads and it's something I would like to hear some feed back about.

First of all I know many here do not use ro water and have much success raising and breeding in all sorts of water conditions.
Whatever works for you and the fish is fine by me.

The question is to people who do use/had experience of using it with their discus. When we first started keeping them about 3 years ago we got our fish from a specialist who only dealt in Discus and only used ro with nothing added and advised us to do the same, something that we never really questioned until looking at these boards. Never thought of trying anything else because of this trusted advise as they had been keeping/breeding and selling discus for many years....

The question is in the title, any feedback would be grateful and if people do use buffers with their ro I'd be interested to find out what you use?
 
Pure RO water is dangerous for a number of reasons. The first is the lack of minerals and vitamins. The lack of minerals causes the second major problem, pH swings due to lack of buffer. Affecting pH isn't too bad as long as it isn't too dramatic, however, without any KH or GH value, your pH can swing rapidly and without warning. This can not only stress fish, but directly be liable for the death of fish. I recommend the use of RO right by Kent Marine.
 
I'll start to add it in slowly, starting with today's w/c at about halve the recommended dose.
This is not to say that the advise is not appreciated it is but I'm always very cautious about doing anything new with the discus tank.
I'll continue adding this at this rate until the tank should have had a complete change and if all is still well or better, go up to the full dose.

I keep you posted(pardon the pun)

Thanks
 
No problems to report after second w/c
 
If you got your discus from someone breeding them in tap water, why go through all that trouble of filtering all that water & then adding minerals? Seems a huge waste of time & water to me.

You won't see any problems right away but long term...
 
All our fish were born and bred in RO no minerals added, apart from two that came from ro that had remineralized water.
 
Wlydfya, should I carry on???

3rd w/c, nothing seems to have changed, ph 6.1 and stable, fish are as greedy/friendly as ever??
 
thanks for the info..... will keep posted
 
I use water straight from the tap with no problems at all. I used to add chemicals to lower the PH but gradually reduced that till now I add nothing but Prime to the water, PH is around 8.0 now and my Discus are doing great.
I know some people who use RO and mix it half and half with tap water. that way you need not add anything.
Ray
 
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